Dipping Deep into The Source

I have fond memories of James Michener's book "The Source" - the novel covers a few thousand years of history in Palestine. My scope is much less ambitious, but here's what I know from months of genealogical research. More than 200 years ago, my great-great-great-grandfather was born in this little village in the backwaters of south-central Sweden. The family was never during those years prosperous. The men always were either low-ranking soldiers as part of a sort of militia that made up the Swedish Army of the time; or what the Brits would call crofters, or tenant farmers. They owned no land and moved often, from cottage to cottage and from farm to farm as they no doubt sought the best opportunity available. It was a hard and unforgiving life, chronicled in a powerfully written set of novels by Swedish author Vilhelm Moberg, a series known as "The Emigrants". At my mother's urging I read these stories while in college and found them very moving. As in the stories there was a famine, in 1868. My great-grandfather Johan Gustaf Johannesson was 16 years old, the oldest child, and no doubt old enough to fend for himself. He borrowed passage to Denmark from an uncle, and except for a brief winter visit about four years later he never looked back. He met and married a Swedish girl from a nearby Smaland town while in Denmark and went to the USA in 1878. He became John G. Johnson and launched the family that we are now, widespread and probably outnumbering our Swedish kin, due to American prolificacy, hybrid vigor and other factors too obscure to mention.

 Meanwhile, here I was at that little dimple in the map of Sweden where the family push-pin used to be. Used to, because there are no known close relatives of Johan Gustaf to be found in these parts. They have either died off or moved off; mostly to other cities large or small in Sweden. Very little trace remains of their lives and labors here in Ryssby; on our weekend visit here the only gravestone markers we found at the church where Johan was baptised were a couple belonging to the Svanholm branch, dating to the last 50 years or so. Even most of the old torps or tenant farm cottages had over time been moved or torn down - after all, the poor, anonymous tenants had moved on to better or worse things. Unremembered, their absence created a sort of real estate opportunity for later generations. The local history association had been diligently working on reconstructing the old maps of the area to put together an accurate list of what went where. In spite of the very kind help of a local man in Ryssby, who looked remarkably like some of the guys I had grown up with in Wisconsin, we were unable to get a fix on any of the spots that my ancestor had spent his formative first 16 years. But we were certainly in the very locale, and I breathed in the nature of the place. Ryssby the town, Ryssby the lake, Woebegone but not forgotten.

The days surrounding the weekend also held more "new cousin" meetings - visiting scenic and historic places in Sweden such as the old port town of Kalmar, whose proud castle had frequently been the target of marauding Danes; and the fertile southern plain of Skane (SKO-nay) which is probably the oldest inhabited portion of the country. Much of the territory there reminded me of my home in the lovely Finger Lakes region of New York state.  The welcome we have received from our new cousins here has been remarkable. There has usually been the mystery of establishing how we are related; old photos and the memories of the older generation work toegether to stitch the factual information I present into the fabric of the "family quilt". Then as it sinks in that we are really part of the same big family, people relax and we get to know each other a bit - the presence of the typically darling young Swedish children often breaks any remnant of tension left from the "Who in the world are these Americans?" phase. Without exception, we have been made welcome, cheerfully given food and drink, housed and ferried about, and generally treated as real family in the best possible sense. The books I read before coming did not prepare me for this. I had been led to expect cool, rather disinterested people who would be careful to make sure that everyone paid their own way. They would be ambivalent about Americans and probably upbraid us for our errant ways. They would be over-indulgent parents, and they themselves would probably be emotionally repressed. Well, let's hear it for smashing stereotypes! It no doubt helps that I grew up with Swedish Americans; but I found both family members and strangers without fail to be friendly, helpful, kind and generous. I love Swedes! They are often calm and quiet, out of consideration for others around them. They value self-control, and are rarley boisterous in public. They adore their children but find ways to positively parent them that appear to work very well. It impresses me as a culture and a country that I could imagine living in, and certainly hope to visit again. Soon.